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BRIDGETON — A Cumberland County Superior Court judge will rule next month whether criminal defense attorneys have a right to “confidential” documents from an ongoing civil lawsuit that alleges rampant corruption in a Vineland police unit.

Two attorneys from the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender say they think the documents will show a pattern of misconduct or suspicious actions in the city’s Street Crimes Unit. If true, the documents could not only free their clients but lead to dozens of other criminal cases being dismissed.

That potential fallout drew about 20 attorneys, from both sides of the law, as spectators at a hearing Friday afternoon before Judge Darrell M. Fineman. Two plainclothes Vineland police officers also attended.

Deputy Public Defender Caroline Turner suggested to Fineman that a “culture” of corruption has existed within the Street Crimes Unit. For Turner, the evidence starts with Vineland Detective Gamaliel “Gami” Cruz.

The county Prosecutor’s Office last spring quietly dismissed 39 criminal cases in which Cruz was a principal investigator. The office said Cruz lied to a judge to obtain a search warrant in one drug investigation, although it declined to prosecute him in order to protect a confidential informant’s identity.

The Prosecutor’s Office disclosed its investigation and the dismissals after an attorney provided the court record on one of the cases to The Daily Journal in November 2011.

The Vineland Police Department has suspended Cruz and seeks to fire him.

However, the city of Vineland’s position is that the civil lawsuit at the heart of Friday’s hearing is a separate matter and without merit.

Vineland police Officer Ronald Farabella filed that lawsuit under the Conscientious Employee Protection Act. He claims he did so after his supervisors and top department and city officials ignored his reports of police misconduct, including allegations that some officers committed drug-related crimes. The officer, now on leave from the department, claims he has suffered retaliatory discipline.

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Due to a state judge’s order in October 2010, court documents related to the Farabella case have been designated confidential and are unavailable to outside parties except for the original complaint and answer.

Deputy Public Defender Katherine Parker, who filed a separate brief from Turner, noted 23 Vineland officers are named in Farabella’s complaint.

Parker added, as a cautionary tale, that the city of Camden is dealing with a similar situation with corruption within its police force.

The Camden County Prosecutor’s Office had to dismiss nearly 200 cases since 2009 because of proven and suspected illegalities within a special Camden police unit. Three members of the five-officer unit pleaded guilty to charges, one was convicted and another was found not guilty last year.

“No one wants to acknowledge these things, but they do happen,” Parker said.

The Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office and the city of Vineland oppose releasing the Farabella lawsuit documents.

County First Assistant Prosecutor Harold Shapiro represented his office before Fineman. Attorney Nicholas Dibble, a member of the law firm representing Vineland in the lawsuit, told the judge he agrees with Shapiro’s arguments.

The Prosecutor’s Office is familiar with the Farabella allegations because it investigated them at the city’s request. That investigation, which concluded in December, was separate from the civil procedure. The Prosecutor’s Office determined there was no cause to file criminal charges in connection with Farabella’s claims. The city Police Department announced the close of the investigation, but no report and no details were released.

Shapiro said Vineland’s attorney provided some depositions to him on the condition that they not be disclosed. “And I think it was a reasonable request at the time,” he told Fineman.

Shapiro said the prosecutor’s investigation concluded that allegations against the 23 officers Farabella named were unfounded in all but one case — Cruz.

But how, Turner asked, “is it not a breach of the confidentiality order” for prosecutors to have seen the file?

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“It wasn’t broadcast to the world,” Shapiro said.

“It would be very nice to have the same opportunity,” Turner responded.

Turner had subpoenaed Farabella for Friday’s hour-plus hearing. The officer did not take the witness stand, although he sat in the back of the courtroom for the proceeding. He exited afterward without commenting.

Most civil lawsuit files are available to the public. The Farabella lawsuit file is not public because the city and Farabella’s attorney reached an agreement that allows them to decide what should be kept secret.

County Superior Court Judge Richard Geiger approved the confidentiality order based on that agreement. The order allows the two parties to mark documents confidential without further court approval. The Daily Journal’s requests to the city through the state Open Public Records Act for documents in the Farabella case have been denied.

The 2010 confidentiality order states that “all information produced or exchanged in the course of this litigation and designated as ‘confidential information’ shall be used solely for this litigation and not for any other purpose whatsoever.”

The order further states that extending access to anyone else “may be made only upon mutual consent of the parties or upon Order of the Court.”

Turner’s client at Friday’s hearing is Maurice A. Pettway, a Vineland resident arrested in August 2010 on charges stemming from city police finding a pistol in his car. The Street Crimes Unit stopped the vehicle based on information an unidentified confidential informant had phoned in to Cruz. The tip was that Pettway would be delivering drugs, but it proved to be wrong.

The State of New Jersey vs. Maurice Pettway case is among an unspecified number of cases the Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office still is pursuing, despite Cruz’s involvement in them. The office argues that, in Pettway’s case and others, Cruz wasn’t a critical part of the investigation and the case can proceed without using him as a witness.

At one point in Friday’s hearing, Shapiro said there was “zero” chance of the state ever calling Cruz as a witness for a hearing or a trial.

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Parker’s client is John M. Bruell, whom court records show has a lengthy history of arrests. Friday’s arguments did not specify when Bruell, a Cumberland County resident, was arrested or what the charges are against him. Public defenders are not allowed to comment to reporters on cases.

Parker said Bruell is entitled to confront witnesses against him, something the release of Farabella lawsuit documents would facilitate. “This is relevant to a due process issue,” she told Fineman.

When Fineman asked whether any defendant should be allowed such access, Parker said: “Not every defendant and not any charge. But certainly any charges that were relevant to the defense.”

According to testimony Friday, an investigator for the Prosecutor’s Office recently interviewed two Vineland police officers who worked on the Pettway case and also interviewed their supervisor. The investigator’s report provided some support for Turner’s suspicions about the unit.

Shapiro sent a letter Thursday to Turner discussing the investigator’s findings on whether the officers were lying to protect Cruz. Shapiro and Turner both referenced the letter in court.

According to their statements, county Special Agent Ronald Cuff Jr. of the office’s Professional Standards Unit interviewed an Officer Magee, who completed the search warrant affidavit used to stop Pettway, and an Officer Mackafee, a K-9 officer whose dog indicated it smelled drugs in Pettway’s vehicle. Their superior, a Sgt. Shadinger, also was interviewed.

According to testimony, the search warrant affidavit stated that the unit’s informant against Pettway was not paid to be an informant. The informant was a former drug user who wanted to help take down criminals, police told the unidentified judge who issued the warrant.

However, Cuff’s investigation showed the police depiction of the informant was inaccurate. The informant, in fact, had been receiving payments for tips for several years, he concluded after reviewing police records.

Turner also focused on Cruz’s claimed limited role in the Pettway case.

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Testimony states the informant’s call about Pettway came in at the end of a shift. Cruz allegedly put the phone in speaker mode so that another officer, Magee, could hear the information. That officer then took over the case.

Turner questioned whether police, given their concern for protecting sources, would “broadcast across the room” an informant’s conversation where anyone including the “cleaning lady” could hear it.

The defense attorney also noted Magee “cut and pasted” the inaccurate information about the informant from what Cruz provided while filling out the search warrant affidavit. She suggested Magee knew that borrowed information was not factual.

Again referring to Cuff’s report, Turner noted Magee and Mackafee made different statements about whether they knew there was a pistol in Pettway’s vehicle. Magee told Cuff he did not know there was a weapon, but Mackafee said Magee had told him he had information there was a weapon.

“There are so many inconsistencies and so many things that don’t add up,” Turner said about the Street Crimes Unit. “It appears that each is trying to cover up for the other.”

Turner added, “And we do not know in how many other cases Officer Cruz lied and how many officers backed him up.”

Shapiro responded: “There is nothing to attack probable cause (for the arrest) in any way, that Officer Magee made everything up, that the dog did not hit on the vehicle. These are the facts and we live by facts.”

Looking ahead, Fineman posed to Shapiro the possibility that at some point Farabella could take the stand in civil court and testify to everything now under seal. The judge also suggested such a “profound issue” was a good reason for him to conduct an “in camera” — or private — review of the case file.

“What’s the harm of the court reviewing all this material in camera?” Fineman asked the prosecutor. “It would still be confidential.”

Shapiro responded there is no factual basis for a review, basing his argument on case law.

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